CollegeMeasures.org provides information on graduation rates,
first-year retention rates, cost per student, cost per degree, default
rates and debt-to-income ratios for recent college graduates at 1,576
four-year public and private US colleges. The site was developed by
the American Institutes for Research and the Matrix Knowledge Group.

EFAL is a commercial product consisting of a series of
information databases that contain Student Financial Assistance
documents disseminated by the US Department of Education (DoEd) and
the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to colleges,
universities, guarantors and lenders. These infobases include
compilations of current law, regulations, regulation interpretations,
accounting and recordkeeping procedures and Act amendments which
affect federal student financial aid programs. They also contain all
Dear Colleague Letters and relevant Federal Registers and Policy
Memorandums. EFAL also includes the 1994-95 Student Financial Aid Handbook.
The link above gets you to the root of the Software Creations WWW
site. You will then need to navigate down to the EFAL page.
For more information contact efal-info@mhs.scbbs.com.
(Alternate addresses include
finaid@mhs.scbbs.com
and sysop@mhs.scbbs.com.)

The Postsecondary Education Network (PEN) is owned and maintained by
the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
(NASFAA) and provides material of interest only to financial aid
administrators. It includes technical, regulatory and legislative
reports prepared by NASFAA staff, Federal Register documents available
the day of publication, text of other Department of Education
regulatory documents, the NASFAA Hotline and College Board Washington
Report, newsletters from other financial aid organizations and
associations, job classifieds, NASFAA documents and a daily summary
of financial aid news delivered by e-mail.

A password is required to access this service. Only individuals at NASFAA
member institutions may use this service. PEN became a benefit of NASFAA
membership as of July 1, 1996 and there is no additional charge to
access PEN.

To obtain instructions about how to register as a new user, please visit the
NASFAA Information Page,
call 1-202-785-0453, fax
1-202-785-1487, or send e-mail to pen@smtp.nasfaa.org.
Once you are a
subscriber, you can access PEN through the
NASFAA Information Page.
In addition, PEN can be accessed via modem using free software
available from NASFAA and via telnet.

The Project on Student Debt offers the latest news and research on student debt and financial aid policy; commentary and analysis by leading economists, researchers, and experts on college access and financial aid; and forums where you can share your own views about student debt. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Project welcomes FAA’s input and ideas about the role of student loans, and policies that can help increase access.

NCHELP publishes
The Word From Washington,
a weekly newsletter on public policy, legislative and
regulatory news and information relating to the FFEL program.
NCHELP hosts several annual
conferences and conventions
for its members. They also maintain
working committees
on default management, program operations, program regulations,
program regulations, membership services and training, public
information and school/lender relations.

NCHELP is perhaps most well-known in the industry for
CommonLine,
an industry-wide effort to standardize loan processing procedures,
data formats and software.
CommonLine simplifies the application, guarantee and disbursement
process by facilitating electronic communication among schools and
service providers.

NCHELP's web site will soon include an extensive basic
library
of reference materials.

Project EASI
(Easy Access for
Students and Institutions) is a
collaborative effort among government, business and higher education
leaders to reengineer student financial aid delivery. Although the
project has a web site that is immediately useful for planning,
applying and paying for education beyond high school, its vision is
more long term. Project EASI welcomes feedback from all members of the
student aid community.

The University of Delaware is using the World-Wide Web to provide
secure access to administrative records to students, faculty and
staff. Their
demo
illustrates access to grades, schedules, transcripts, student ID card
information and, of course, student financial aid records. There is
also an online application form for admissions. They use social
security numbers as userids and a PIN number as a password. An
article by Carl Jacobson about the system entitled
Internet Tools Access
Administrative Data
appears in Cause 95.

The US Department of Education provides several sites containing information of interest to financial aid administrators.

The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) web site includes a section devoted to news and official announcements to the higher education community. In particular, it includes information of interest to financial aid administrators, such as updates on the status of the processing of the FAFSAs and changes in regulations.

The Department of Education provides a web directory containing documents published in the Federal Register by the US Department of Education. In particular, the revisions of the need analysis methodology can be found in the Announcements section in late May or early June of each year.

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance is a committee established by Congress to provide advice on financial aid policy issues. The committee is charged by Congress to conduct objective, nonpartisan and independent analyses on important aspects of the student assistance programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act. The committee welcomes input from the general public and can be reached at